When done well, webinars have the ability to break down communication barriers between viewers and your brand. They allow you to connect with your audience from anywhere at any time and to create more personal brand experiences. So it’s important that you try to engage your audience as much as you can.
From adding visual elements encouraging interaction, here are some tips that will help you engage your audience on a webinar! Let’s dig in.
How to engage your audience on a webinar
1. Add visual elements
If we think about movies and how they manage to keep viewers focused for one hour and a half, or more, the answer is movement, amongst other things. They grab our attention with the action, meaning footage and scenes. Though you might not have grand action scenes during your webinar, you can still use visual elements and professional live video features to your advantage.
Watchity allows you to customize your live webinar connecting cameras and smartphones, sharing your screen or webcam, adding lower-thirds, overlays, brand logos and pre-recorded videos. This way, you can create great-looking webinars with an amazing brand image that makes it stand out from the rest.
2. Make sure to have a live chat
Having a live chat is essential for your audience to have a complete viewing and interaction experience. But you can go even further: The Watchity video player offers the audience play/pause controls, chatting options, language and subtitles selections, streaming quality choice and many more features.
3. Be yourself
People watching a webinar want to know the person guiding them through the video knows what he or she is talking about. You can start by opening your webinar telling viewers who you are, what you do, and why they should trust you to present this content.
Then, during the rest of the webinar try to let your personality shine and be charismatic. Our advice is to find the perfect balance between a professional presentation and a dynamic presentation that shows your identity and charm.
On a side note, keep in mind that people usually notice falsehood, so don’t pretend to be someone you’re not either.
4. Share something personal
This will establish trust with your audience. Transparency is a great resource to get closer to your public. That’s because being your authentic self and riding with any slip-ups shows you’re human.
Don’t be afraid to throw little personal tidbits or anecdotes into your presentation. These details are what will set your broadcast apart from a lot of impersonal webinars that are put out there.
5. Ask questions
Encourage users to comment by asking them questions. You can throttle your viewer engagement by calling your viewers out and asking them to leave a comment during the webinar. There’s no need to be shy about asking for comments during your live stream. Here are a few simple, effective ways you can ask people to leave comments:
- “Let me know where you’re watching from!”
- “How are you?”
- “Which one do you prefer?”
- “Can you relate to that?”
- “Any questions?”
Moreover, you can open up a Q&A at the end of a section.
6. Call people by their names
During a webinar, you’re building relationships with your viewers and names are relevant. So, at the beginning of your live video, greet viewers by name. You don’t have to worry about saying everyone’s names. That will be unsustainable for bigger audiences. The simple act of saying some of their names will change the atmosphere, and they will feel included.
If you are answering someone’s question, make sure you mention who it’s from. It will encourage others to interact with you because they can see you are paying attention.
7. Give your audience a reason to stay until the end
Both at the beginning and in the middle of your webinar, let your viewers know exactly why they should stick around to the end. Here are some ideas:
- Promise viewers you’ll tell them how to do something (“Stay tuned to the end when I’ll tell you the secret to….”)
- Give the details of an upcoming promotion or contest at the end of your broadcast
- Give away something of value: For example, you can offer free items of value like PDF handouts, some infographics, etc. Your audience will appreciate the care that you’ve taken to do this.
If you want to know about more creating webinars with Watchity, send us a message or request a demo.